It gives me great pleasure to welcome platoon chief Brent Shea from the London Fire Department, as well as deputy fire chief Mark Parkhurst from the Ajax fire service. Welcome to Queen’s Park. I look forward to our meeting.

Today, I mark the passing of Rod Brawn, a good friend of mine, beloved of Tina, a staunch New Democrat and a kind, gentle and loving person to all lucky enough to meet him.

Rod was born in Sarnia on May 19, 1954, and earned three degrees at the University of Western Ontario: honours history, honours music and bachelor of education.

Rod had a variety of jobs: James Reaney Sr.’s research assistant, a journalist for several small-town newspapers and an elementary and secondary supply teacher.

Rod was passionate about music and was active in his church, St. John the Evangelist. He sang in the choir and played the trumpet for special occasions. Rod often played the Last Post at the funerals of WWII veterans and refused to be paid for the service; it was his way of honouring veterans.

Craig Smith writes, “Rod’s trumpet may have been silenced, but his music will still be heard.”

Rod tutored refugee children and volunteered with the Amabile choir. He was adamant about helping the underdog. As Rod and Tina were fond of saying, “Jesus was a socialist.” Now if that confuses anyone, please be sure to go back and read it again.

Rod fought for universal health care and public education. He truly believed J.S. Woodsworth’s words, “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all.”

In his final years, Tina had to fight for Rod’s health care, trudging him through snow in the middle of winter to a clinic for his so-called home care. Rod fought for a system that wasn’t cut to the bone and privatized. Throughout, Tina has been the example of selfless love, caring for Rod without a word of complaint.

Rod died on May 12, a week shy of his 70th birthday. He was well loved by all.

Rod, I commit to you that I will keep you at the heart of all of my work and every decision I make here in this Legislature. Rest in peace, Rod.

Thank you to my colleague from Parkdale–High Park for your presentation, focusing on affordability and the Orwellian title of Bill 165.

When the standing committee met to discuss Bill 165, representatives from Unifor, including Samia Hashi and Doug Carter, testified at the committee and they stated that the Ontario Energy Board needs to do a much better job of monitoring gas companies’ investments in infrastructure. They actually stated to the committee, “When gas leaks are not fixed, Ontario families pay three times: They pay through delayed investment in upgrading and maintaining our gas infrastructure; they pay for it through climate change; they pay through the increased risks of major safety incidents.”

Would the member like to comment about how this government is not looking after affordability in this bill and actually could do so by listening to the representatives from Unifor?

I’d like to thank the member from Markham–Thornhill for his question. I am pleased to see that within Bill 185 the government has recognized the mistakes that it has made. It realized that with Bill 23 they were stepping on municipalities, that they were insulting municipalities, that they weren’t working as true partners with municipalities. They were instead transferring money over to people who don’t need more money. They were transferring money over to wealthy developers by allowing them to not pay development charges, and, really, who is going to pay for that? Who is going to pay for all of that missing money? That will be shifted onto the tax base. That will be shifted onto everyone paying taxes within Ontario, and that is the reverse of Robin Hood. It should make absolutely no sense to them.

But I do want to point out that municipalities should be treated as partners. This government’s words don’t go far enough. Many housing stakeholders are calling upon the province to engage in that dialogue, engage in those meetings.

Instead, they’re transferring wealth over to people who don’t really need more money. They’re privatizing health care, but through Bill 23, they’re giving shovelfuls of money to wealthy developers while forcing regular taxpayers to pay for that infrastructure. It’s disgraceful. It’s unconscionable. It actually strikes at the heart of true fiscal Conservatives. They should be more wise with their money. They should be spending money in homes, not-for-profit housing, where there’s that long-term economic viability.

This legislation itself is not completely awful. I will say with schedule 8, it’s pretty benign in a lot of ways, but it is updating something that is really archaic. I think it modernizes language that’s actually there, things like “forthwith,” that I don’t know that many people—maybe the member from Essex likes saying “forthwith.” It’s not something we hear very often in modern speech in the vernacular.

But I think there are also a lot of opportunities within this legislation that this government has missed. Number one is making sure that renters are protected, that people who currently have homes will remain in those homes.

I recently had the opportunity to tour Ark Aid Street Mission’s Cronyn-Warner site.

I’d like to applaud the city of London and all of the phenomenal service and community partners working on the whole of community health and homelessness strategy tables.

It was rather cold as we walked down Dundas Street from Ark Aid’s main location, punctuated by our entry into the warm Cronyn-Warner location. I want to thank the Diocese of Huron and the board at Warner Place for providing the location at a fraction of the market rate to care for the marginalized people in our community.

Ark Aid has served 900 unique people this year. We heard from Rob, who struggled with accessing health care while homeless. He was proud to tell us about his improvements and his future goals. None of this would have happened without Ark Aid and housing.

Funding for these spaces and others like SafeSpace and many more will end on May 31 this year. Homelessness in London will not end on June 1. If funding doesn’t flow, 100 dedicated and caring staff will be unemployed; 120 resting places will become vacant—vital and necessary, but vacant. I was shocked to learn that the providers will have to warehouse all the mattresses while people sleep rough.

I call on government members to listen to their conscience and fund these beds now. Think of the people who are rebuilding their lives and whose hopes and dreams will be much further away without the basic human necessity of housing.

We have the space. We have caring people ready to help. All that is needed is political will. Housing is foundational, housing is fundamental, housing is a human right, and housing is health care.

It’s my great honour to welcome the amazing crew from NDP Western who are visiting Queen’s Park today, including Austin Wang, Liam Solomon, Alex Wild, Marek Brooking, Can Batili, Nicholas Pestill and Ismael Sayal. You’re all an inspiration.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t welcome members of my legislative and constituency team, Marie Rioux and Sarah Lehman.

I hope you have a great visit today.

It’s my honour to welcome housing advocates from across the province for our National Housing Day: Bradley Palmer, Mariana Cortes, Aishatu Ahmed, Ibrahim Elnaghi, Godfrey Benjamin, Keneisha Brown, Colleen Lamond, Soraya Naim and Gautam Mukherjee. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

As a former teacher librarian, it’s my great pleasure to welcome members from the Ontario Library Association as well as the Ontario School Library Association for their library days at Queen’s Park: Michael Ciccone, CEO and chief librarian at the London Public Library; Wendy Burch Jones, the vice-president of OSLA and with the Toronto District School Board; Johanna Gibson-Lawler, the president of OSLA and with the greater Essex school board; as well as Sarah Vaisler, who is the chief librarian and executive officer at Ajax Public Library. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to thank the member from Parkdale–High Park for her comments. The member stated that the government doesn’t know how to build and doesn’t know how to deliver on transit and cited the really infamous Eglinton Crosstown fiasco. What we’ve seen from this government is a disturbing ideological reliance on expensive, wasteful P3 contracts and very little respect for public dollars. It’s as though the government wants to take a back seat while others do the driving. They’re continuing this party with public money.

In the bill itself, though, it says that they are doing this to “support the creation of local and regional transit connections.” “Regional transit connections” shows up once. “Rural” doesn’t even show in up this bill. Does the member from Parkdale–High Park think that this plan will support regional models outside of the GTA such as in southwestern Ontario?

Speaker, it’s my pleasure to introduce the people from the Canadian Franchise Association. I hope you have wonderful meetings at Queen’s Park today.

I’d like to thank the member for her presentation. Recently, on the day to acknowledge missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited individuals, I had the opportunity to attend my alma mater, Althouse College, who had taken and repurposed their library into an Indigenous learning space as well as an outdoor area.

Specifically, we are sitting on quite a vast footprint here at Queen’s Park. My question to the member: How would you like to see the outdoor space reimagined to include Indigenous peoples? How can you foresee us making sure that this is a welcome and open space, building on those relationships?

It’s my honour to introduce Michael Sud, formerly with the NDP Western university club. Michael is studying law and hopefully business, as well.

Welcome to Queen’s Park, Michael.

I’d like to thank the member from Markham–Unionville for his presentation. Curiously, in his presentation as well as in the budget, there is no mention of school violence.

I’d like to turn to a pre-budget submission from ETFO Thames Valley Teacher Local in which they report—and this is in addition to the Thames Valley District School Board—that in June 2022, there were 463 reported acts of school violence; in September 2022, 687; October 2022, 982; November, 693; December, 490; and January 2023, 502. The six-month average will be 636, and this would show that schools in the Thames Valley District School Board are well on track to report 6,360 acts of school violence.

Why is the government ignoring the problem of school violence here in Ontario?

It’s an honour to welcome former MP for London North Centre, Glen Pearson, and his partner, Jane Roy, as part of the Feed Ontario breakfast. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’d like to introduce two great groups of people, the wonderful people from Western University in my riding: Dr. Alan Shepard, Grace Parraga, Florentine Strzelczyk, Keith Gibbons, Peter White, Althea Blackburn-Evans, John Doerksen, Opiyo Oloya, Sophie Helpard and Sara Ridout. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

On behalf of the official opposition, I’d like to welcome Raida Chowdhury, our legislative learner, to Queen’s Park.